MSNBC’s Matthews: Hillary ‘Can’t Match’ the ‘Thrill Up the Leg’ Obama Gave Me

Thursday on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews said Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton “can’t match,” the “thrill up the leg,” then Senator Barack Obama gave him in the 2008 presidential election.

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Partial transcript as follows:

MATTHEWS: I wonder if that’s just something, you know, what are we going to do now? We did that before. Don’t we got something new? I think Obama was so exciting. I think, you know, I was the thrill up the leg and all that. I admitted I was overwhelmed by his speeches ’cause I’d go to all these rooms with 200 people in it and I had never heard anybody speak like Obama. His presidency obviously couldn’t live up to that level. It couldn’t. It was so stellar, the excitement in those crowds. First African-American, young guy, incredibly educated and couldn’t give a speech like nobody’s been able to do since — well, certainly on the Democratic side since Kennedy.

LOS ANGELES TIMES’ KURTIS LEE: Absolutely One of the best orators that a lot of people have seen on the political stage and, yeah — it’s —

MATTHEWS: Hillary can’t match that.

LEE: I mean, there was talk about Rubio being solid on the stump, but, you know, that kind of fell off as the cycle went on.

MATTHEWS: Rubio, this message has been prerecorded. That’s what I think every time I hear him.